토니 모리슨의 여성공간에 나타난 시각 예술적 특징

Abstract

This study discusses Toni Morrison's visual aesthetics of the feminist space in her novels. Morrison's spatial locations include the southern, western, and southwestern parts of the USA and an island in the Caribbean. However, these parts are just referred to by their names. Her focus is not on the whole parts of these places. She has a centripetal perspective that compresses them into the compact places to reflect her themes and characterizations. So, on opening the first pages of her novels, her readers are attracted to the inner parts of these compact places. The places may resemble a feministic space, such as the female self or womb, but this study intends to stress the visual image comprising Morrison's visual elements of perspective, light and color. Morrison, like a painter, depends on perspective, light and color in describing spatial places. She arranges objects in her perspective scope. Nothing is found beyond her perspective because she uses her eyes to describe her spatial places. It should be noted that the shapes of the objects are not described in detail. Instead, her objects are presented to the reader through impressionistic shapes, lights and colors. Considering these clues, this study suggests that Morrison's spatial places reflect impressionistic traits. Although this study does not convince the critics that Morrison is interested in impressionism, the conclusion is persuasive enough because it can be explored in Morrison's American modernist aesthetics. Among American modernists, Henry James and William Faulkner provide a stylistic background to her aesthetics. While the former introduced European impressionism into American literature, the latter was as much parochial and suggestive as were the impressionists. This study also suggests that Morrison's impressionist traits were influenced by them.